These Nazi collaborators have legacy parties in Ukraine, specifically Svoboda and Right Sector
They have a militia, Azov Battalion and it’s successors
There are monuments all over Ukraine to commemorate the genocidal maniac Stepan Bandera
Not a Democracy in any way we would recognize in the West
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@Grabski Let's hope Azov all make the ultimate sacrifice on the battlefield, and Zelenski, with the west behind him, can clean the country up after the war ends. What a sick stew history has cooked up everywhere you turn.
Reading this and seeing the stark and haunting photos reminded me of my search for my own slaughtered family in Serbia. They too lie in a field marked by two trees. All twenty two, unmarked but remembered. Another genocide. This time of ethnic Germans living in Yugoslavia. Whole families decimated. Whole neighborhoods emptied. Neighbor against neighbor. Another atrocity. Yes, we can kill each other. And it happens quickly.
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Another reason why all borders should crumble, we have seen earth from a spaceship, we now know we are all just earthlings scrambling to survive on the few acres of dirt our beautiful planet provides. Thank you for your exquisite reminder of the horrors of war over nonsense.
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My mind cannot understand people who would be barbarous enough to kill entire families and wipe whole villages from the face of the Earth. That's pure hate and evil in their most vile expression.
I have stated often that I don't believe in Satan and then I read something like this. The obscene darkness people are capable of has forced me to question beliefs I have had all my life.
I have always believed good triumphs over evil. It must!
And because this beautiful book has been made into a reality, goodness and decency has won.
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Evil and Satan are two different things.
Evil exists. Satan does not.
One of the best antidotes to evil is to cast light on it.
Thank you for the article.
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I am glad the texts are being supplemented by visuals now. The memory of Holocaust needs to remain and kept alive, because as you look around the world, the self-same alt right ideas are raising their ugly heads again.
I've learned as I travel more and more, that places which have seen violence, murder, mayhem and tears-- always retain the memory of that horror-- as if the stain of spilled blood is stamped on it, forever.
I use to make fun of my own empathy, but when it was corroborated a few times, I started taking it seriously.
Let me tell you a tale...
I went to Morocco, Meknès, which was the capital in the 17th century of Moulay Ismail, one of Morocco's greatest (& most cruel) rulers. I went alone to the underground prison which was used for Christians prisoners and folks he didn't like. It was silent, cold, wide open arches, but so silent. The silence was so heavy with despair, it was difficult to breath, and a pervasive sadness. There was no one around. And then I heard whispers in Arabic and then a language which wasn't french but similar... it was a whispered conversation between lovers it seemed.
I couldn't see anyone. But feeling of sadness and no hope was stifling. I did make a hasty retreat.
I learned of the horrors perpetrated there later.
As I looked at the pictures later, that feeling of doom was writ large on the photographs as well. I felt the same looking at these pictures.
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Thank you for shedding light on this atrocity. While context is crucial in any historical discussion, the manner in which these murders were carried out must be emphasized. The sadistic nature of these crimes and the levels of butchery that was witnessed defy adequate description. It would suffice to add that even the SS and the NKWD (precursor of the KGB) found it necessary to underline and document the savagery with which these atrocities were carried out. That speaks volumes in and of itself. It serves as a chilling reminder of the dark side of human nature.
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The history of Volhyn is clearly a very convoluted one. In addition, e.g., during the second half of the 19th century many Germans were invited to settle there. During the 1st World War many of those were first deported by Russia and then resettled to some extent.
My grandfather - together with most men of his native German village - was put into "custody" by Polish army forces when the second WW broke out; When they were released they were massacred by some militia as they tried to walk home.
My mother became an orphan during WW II, and many families from all peoples in Volhyn and other places lost everything, property and kins.
It seems we - us humans - still have not even come close to recognizing the extend and the details of the damage and catastrophe we are capable of imparting. This book seems like a step towards that goal.
Until we have reached it, we run serious risks for all of us.
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The complete eradication of these villages illustrates the intent of wiping out all traces of existence.
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I haven’t seen the book, so don’t know whether it provides any historical or political context for the massacre. But a failure to provide such contexts would be irresponsible.
At the end of WW I and upon the collapse of the Hapsburg Empire, today’s western Ukraine declared the Western Ukrainian National Republic in November 1918. The Ukrainians offered full and equal civil rights to all minorities, chief among whom were Poles and Jews. In response, a Polish army with French help invaded western Ukraine, defeated the Ukrainians and forcibly incorporated western Ukraine, including Volhyn, into Poland in a reassertion of its colonial past. In the interwar period in these Ukrainian-majority lands, Poles were dominant politically, economically and in terms of imposed educational, cultural and linguistic policies. The Polish government also awarded land in Volhyn to Polish soldiers who had helped defeat the Ukrainians.
During WW II, the Polish government in exile in London continued to insist that it would try to reassert its dominion over western Ukrainian lands, so this doomed attempts by the Ukrainian underground to try and reach an accommodation with the Polish underground for purposes of standing against German and Soviet forces. In response, the Ukrainian underground told the Poles to leave Volhyn; the Polish government in exile instructed its settlers to stay to constitute kind of human markers of Polish presence and entitlement to rule. The massacre ensued.
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@Bohdan Vitvitsky Poles were often tortured before they were killed. Those killed included average people, women and children. There is no justification for the massacres.
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@Bohdan Vitvitsky
My family members were peasant farmers in this region after the war. I don’t know whether they were ethnically Ukrainian or Polish or some mix thereof. I don’t think they cared. They just wanted to be left alone.
They told me that the Polish soldiers would come by during the day and take their food. Then the Ukrainian insurgents would come at night to do the same. If either found out that you’d helped the other, they’d kill you. My grandmother remembers waking up to find her neighbors — a whole family, children included — hanging from a tree in their front yard, courtesy of the Ukrainian insurgents.
It is a horrific, shameful history. There is no justification for such atrocity.
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@Bohdan Vitvitsky In 1943 there were no more Polish settlers , they were already deported by the Soviets. The remaining Polish population, like it or not, was autochthonous, moreover "ukrainized" by language and shared customs to the important extent. Your "reasoning" per "contextualization" amounts to the rationalisation of a particularly heinous war crime, the unfortunately common psychological defense mechanism that often plays into hands of a nationalist effort to obfuscate or outright deny the events and whitewash now officially lionized Ukrainian nationalist underground militias...
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Congratulations, Magdalena and Maksymilian. Thank you for this sad and beautiful book.
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Thank-you. The discussions MUST never stop.
I am the child of Holocaust survivors born in Canada and they told me to " go back and help all the good people for the bad ones cannot stop one thousand years of Jewish peoples working with all the other groups in Poland and all the other lands near by ". " Life was hard at times but under Poland we all shared what we could knowing that our culture was shared, our religions were shared,...and every thing was bigger than any one of us, any group of us..."
I spent over 25 years starting and running the largest private human rights organization and then returned to find most peoples in North America do not understand what caused the Holocaust for they fail to understand how short their lives are.
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[email protected]@Stanley I am German my moth is from ruuterhausen and her parents were from East Berlin. They were mistreated by the ss. But notice g compared to the horrific things done onto these human beings. Frightened by the evil that surrounded them threatening their lives. I cant help but ask where God was during these times? I cant imagine what these people must have gone thru before it ending one way or another. Shame on the us for not getting involved and puttingng a stop to it! This country had a moral obligations and once again failed in the worst way at the cost of so many lives. I'm so sorry and thank you for your work it's very important.
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